On Oct. 25, Portland transportation professionals Anthony Buczek and Denver Igarta faced a computer screen that connected them to Carlos Chang's senior civil engineering class at University of Texas, El Paso.
Chang's class, reflected back to them on the screen, was assigned real multi-modal transportation projects from El Paso's plans. The students were tasked with conducting the projects as if they were consultants.
Chang said El Paso is planning more user-friendly streets, hoping to create an environment that encourages walking and biking so people can be safer and enjoy getting around.
Buczek, of Metro's planning department, and Igarta, of the Portland Bureau of Transportation, were there to help.
"We talked about what kinds of physical changes you can make to the streets to make them better for walking, biking and transit," Buczek said. "And, how to do that without adversely affecting motor vehicle traffic. To make projects politically palatable, that's always a pretty important step."
It wasn't the first time the two spoke together before an audience. Buczek and Igarta held a complete streets discussion during the 2013 Urban Sustainability Accelerator Summer Convening.
The Urban Sustainability Accelerator, created last year, is a program run through Portland State University with the mission of helping urban areas nationwide achieve their plans, goals and policies.
The emphasis of the program is implementing existing sustainability plans of participating jurisdictions, rather than forming new ones.
The first convening was held in July. Representatives from eight urban areas across the country assembled in Portland to make connections and learn more from local sustainability experts.
"We called it the convening, rather than a conference. That was deliberate," said Robert Liberty, a former Metro councilor and now director of the Urban Sustainability Accelerator. "'Conference' implies presentations are made to you. We treated ours as consultations."
A city staffer from El Paso, one of the participating cities, told Liberty about Chang's class working on the city's complete streets designs. Liberty put him in touch with Buczek and Igarta.
Chang said he was interested in having the Portland professionals speak about multimodal streets because of Portland's demonstrated capability with such projects.
"There were things we saw as just concepts, but we were wrong," Chang said. "There were photos of these things already done in Portland. These ideas are out there, working.
"The team in Portland is ahead, really leading nationwide in that kind of integration," he said. "We are very grateful that they shared their experience."
Buczek said that part of his job as a transportation engineer is thinking about the type and quality of places he's trying to build, then designing streets to support that, rather than just focusing on how to move people around.
This message came through in the presentation, according to Chang.
"It's not just about engineering," Chang said. "It's about looking at the real purpose of the project, what it is trying to accomplish, and how it fits into the community. We have to think about how design plays a role in the use. Us engineers don't always have that perspective."
Chang and UTEP hope to continue the relationship with Portland, with more presentations and perhaps in-person visits between the cities.
Following the convening, other cities have made connections as well.
Representatives from the University of California, Davis are flying to Maine to hold discussions about building an ecodistrict. City staff from Louisville, Ky., are reaching out to local educational institutions to collaborate on neighborhood plans.
"There was no friction to overcome in these relationships – there just wasn't an occasion to make the connection," Liberty said. "We're bringing people together around projects with an added sustainability component. And they're really enjoying it."
Note: An earlier version of this story misidentified Buczek's title. He is a transportation engineer. This version has been corrected.